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Friday, January 23, 2015

Visual Thinking – the Path to Genius?

This article was published on the dooodleledo website, but I have decided to post it here as well, as visual thinking is one the crucial competencies of a nowaday's Projet Manager. Please join our next Doodleledo meeting in Gdansk on 30th January 2015. More details here.

Visual thinking has
been described as seeing words as a series of pictures (Wikipedia). For me
visual thinking is the ability to work effectively with the complicated ideas.
By unlocking the power of visual thinking we can overcome problems, think more
creatively and critically, make better decisions and expand our perspective of
what's possible (Visual Thinking
Magic).

In
times of increasing complexity, competition and constraint, we cannot rely on yesterday’s ideas, products and ways of working. Today’s leaders in order to
improve performance need to stimulate creative thinking and unleash the
creative potential in themselves and in their teams. IBM study reveals that
creativity is the most important leadership quality followed by integrity and
global thinking – 1500 corporate leaders, from 60 nations and 33 industries
were pulled on what drives them in managing their companies in today’s world.
Creative leaders are more prepared to break with the status quo of industry,
enterprise, and revenue models.

“Great is the human who has not lost
his childlike heart”

—
Mencius (Meng-Tse), 4th century BCE

“Albert Einstein believed that the words and
numbers — as they are written or spoken — did not play a significant role in
his thinking process. Geniuses are constantly making novel combinations. They
are always looking for ways to combine and recombine things and ideas in new
ways. What’s surprising is that the things they are combining are not new or
revolutionary at all — they simply haven’t been combined this way before. When
thinking visually, you are constantly combining and recombining things in
unique ways. You are looking at the same world as everyone else, but seeing
something very different by using pictures to fuse together surprising
combinations of thoughts, things and ideas” – Visual Thinking Magic.

Although visual thinking is not limited to
drawing, drawing plays a crucial role in developing the visual thinking
expertise. And what’s the most important, everyone
can draw through practicing.

The whole framework can be found on the quoted several times here
Visual Thinking Magic website, which I find very interesting and encourage you
to explore in more details. For me personally, apart from competencies, mindset
and so on, the environment is very
important. How to inspire ourselves and the people around us to be more
enthusiastic, creative and passionate? How to create the space excel?